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Clara Rauchegger, G. González Fuster, The Emergence of Personal Data Protection as a Fundamental Right of the EU, Springer International Publishing, 2014, 274 pp, ISBN 978-3-319-05022-5, International Data Privacy Law, Volume 5, Issue 1, February 2015, Pages 91–94, https://doi.org/10.1093/idpl/ipu034
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Extract
In its judgment in Digital Rights Ireland, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) recently held that the EU Data Retention Directive1 was invalid because it infringed both the fundamental right to privacy and the fundamental right to data protection.2 The court did not distinguish between the two rights, even though they are now guaranteed by two separate articles of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (CFR, Charter).3 This lack of differentiation will not surprise those who have read Gloria González Fuster's book on the advent of the EU fundamental right to personal data protection. It is based on the author's PhD thesis at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
The central argument of the monograph under review is that the EU fundamental right to personal data protection emerged through a series of legal operations of ‘coupling’ and ‘de-coupling’ between the notions of privacy and of data protection. The author illustrates how legal concepts such as privacy, private life, data protection, and personal data protection have over the years been either differentiated or equated in various legal instruments. This continuous renegotiation of legal concepts has ultimately led to the surfacing of a specific EU right to personal data protection and keeps shaping this right today.
